Chief executives saw their total cash compensation increase by nearly 17 percent
last year, according to a study by the Corporate Library, a research group.

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The Washington Post reports the group looked at the compensation packages at
1,019 public companies. The study found that in 2002 chief executives' total
cash compensation - including salary, bonus and other payments - increased to
a median of about $1.2 million.

The authors of the report say they did not include the stock options companies
gave to chief executives in their calculations because of the difficulty in
measuring the value of the perks.

Many chief executives also benefited from long-term incentive plan payouts,
the newspaper notes. These types of plans are aimed at rewarding executives
for meeting business-performance goals. The median value of payments under these
plans was $900,000 in 2002, up from around $500,000 in 2001. Among companies
in the Standard & Poor's 500 index, J.J. Mulva, chief executive of ConocoPhillips
Co., received the largest long-term incentive payment, $14,977,500, the newspaper
reports.

The report found that several companies altered these plans to lower performance
goals or made the payments even if the company did not meet its targets.

Among chief executives in their posts in both 2001 and 2002, the median bonus
was $451,000, up 9 percent from the previous year, the newspaper reports.